NYPD To Study Effects of Stop-And-Frisk

Despite a marked reduction in the amount of stop-and-frisks conducted by city cops, overall crime has decreased, but there has been a slight increase in shootings this year and so the NYPD is going to study the data to see if there’s any correlation. As noted by the Wall Street Journal, Police Commissioner Bratton has said that he doesn’t think there’s a relationship between a decline in deploying the controversial tactic and the recent uptick in violence. A criminologist agrees:

With the decreasing number of stops, “one should expect some increase in crime numbers,” said Richard Rosenthal, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who published a 2014 study that said it was difficult to determine the relationship between stops and crime.

“Crime has not shot up” citywide, he added, “so that suggests to me that the relationship between crime and stop-and-frisk may be pretty weak.”

Last year, a federal court ruled that the NYPD was shredding the Constitution by unfairly targeting minorities, leading to a cutback in the amount of stop-and-frisks that were mostly being used to make weed arrests anyway.